There isn't all that much out there for Jay news today.
In the 'nobody knows anything' category, after being told the Angels and Blue Jays were the only teams chasing Aroldis Chapman and a decision would come soon, now the Red Sox are in on him again. If the Red Sox are, you know the Yankees are, if for no other reason than to drive the price up. He'd be nice to have but we'll see.
The Toronto Star has an 'early look at the Jays starting nine'. They are likely right about how it will look but if we have to watch Jose Bautista and Alex Gonzalez in the 1 and 2 slots in the order all year long I'm not going to be a happy camper.
David Pinto at Baseball Musings makes the case for John Olerud for the Hall (ht/drunks). I agree with him that on of the reasons to dislike Cito's is how he treated Olerud.
Baseball Prospectus likes our pick up of Brandon Morrow:
As far as comparisons go, the interesting and fun thing from Morrow's PECOTA comps for 2010 are the names: Joe Dobson (who broke out in his age-25 season), Nolan Ryan (who broke out in his age-25 season), and Ed Whitson (who broke yadda-yadda—you know the rest). Ryan and Whitson both achieved their breakouts after getting traded, no less, Ryan famously to the Angels from the Mets, Whitson to the Giants from the Pirates; Dobson had to settle for serving his country in World War II before his career progressed much further.
No pressure being compared to Nolan Ryan, but power pitchers sometimes do take a bit to get used to the majors. If you throw 98 mph you can cruise through the minors and it can be a shock when they start hitting you in the majors. Of course, there are some lousy players on Morrow's comp list too.
Bud Selig is talking about a 'World Series' between the MBL and Japan's league champs? I'm sure the players would love that after a long season.
Dave Perkins in the Star talks about the Hall voting process and notes that the worst choices for the Hall didn't come from the Writers. Fans of a smaller Hall should like the writers. On the flip side (do people know what the flip side is anymore, since 45 singles died?) Bruce Dowbiggin wonders if the writers should be voting. He doesn't think Writers should be making the news, they should stick to reporting it.
And Tony La Russa figures Mark McGwire will talk to the press soon. It really is his only chance to make the Hall. Come clean and give up on this crap of not wanting to talk about the past. Course, I'm not really sure what he could say that would satisfy the Writers to the point that they would put his name on the ballot.